


Wild and What It Seems

by Cluegirl



Series: Bequeathments 'verse [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dom/sub, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Intense intimacy, Multi, Pet Play, Steve is a Good Top, Thug play, Tricky power dynamics, negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is this about what I do with Clint?" he asks, because he's expected this for awhile.  There's nobody more protective of Hawkeye than the Widow, even though she can't give her friend the grounding constriction, purgative pain, or comforting domination for which he turns to Steve now that Agent Coulson is dead.  Steve's been rather surprised that the shovel talk's been this long in coming.  Only her eyes flicker strangely at his question, and she shifts as if uncomfortable, or possibly nervous.</p><p>"No," she says, but she's also nodding slowly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Reverence

"I know how to kill you," Natasha says from behind him. She says it with no more gravity than if she were announcing that they've run out of orange juice, or that she was being sent on assignment and would be missing their sparring sessions for the next three weeks.

"I'm not surprised," Steve replies after a moment's thought, eyes on his caramelizing onions. _'Or worried,'_ he doesn't add, because they both know that if she had any intent behind that statement she'd never have announced it. "Do we have any Worcestershire sauce, by the way?" He indulges in only a tiny smile when he hears the rustle of her movement and the quiet click of the cabinet, and his face is reset to polite neutrality when the soft, musky scent of her shampoo announces her arrival at his elbow.

"I could do it with this, but it would be inefficient," she muses, setting the bottle down beside the stove, then hopping up onto the counter. "And messy." She wrinkles her nose as he unscrews the cap and gives the pan a couple of shakes. "Vinegary too."

Steve gives a chuckle at that. "And just think of the trace evidence."

Her smile points into a sharp little V, and her green eyes sparkle. "Oh, I know my way around wetwork. I'd just lay a false trail to an Iron Chef with it, and let Bobby Flay take the fall."

"Now there I have to put my foot down," Steve mock-scowls. "I like Bobby Flay. He does a good burger, and that's harder to find than you'd think these days."

She tilts her head. "You'd be dead, Steve. Really dead, not 'revivable-by-talented-scientists' dead. Burgers would be irrelevant at that point."

He turns to face her, hearing the sharp edge pushing back through their banter. "Natasha, I know you could kill me. Kind of life you've led, you wouldn't have moved into the tower if you didn't know exactly how to kill every one of us. I understand that -- well, not directly, but objectively. I know you're not the only one, either. After what Loki did to Clint, I think Bruce and Thor might be the only Avengers who haven't sat down to draw up contingency plans against all or any of us coming down with a sudden case of homicidal evil."

He has to turn back to his onions then, because they're at a critical stage and he doesn't want to burn them, but he doesn't miss the dissatisfied glint in Natasha's eye, or the way her full lips press pale at his words. He focuses on the subtle chemistry happening in the pan, giving her time to find the words. 

"That's not what I mean," she says at last, her shadow sliding between the overhead light and the stovetop, so that the large kitchen knife in her hand is unmistakably silhouetted against white porcelain.

Steve doesn't turn. He's learned to recognize a test without asking when he's stepped into one. He can't quite help calculating distance, angles, and potential velocity of a skillet full of onions and hot oil, but manages to keep that off his face and out of his voice when he replies. "You don't want to kill me, Natasha."

Her shadow's head shakes, knife unwavering. "Of course I don't. But that isn't the point." Her voice is beginning to fray, the calm edge unraveling just a bit, letting something sharp and dark show through underneath, and Steve turns then to face it. She's farther away than he'd expected, not hovering over his back, but still within arm's reach, and the knife she's taken up is the one he'd used to chop the onions in the first place, but that isn't why her eyes look bright and brittle and hot as new glass. He turns the pan off and slides it to a cool burner without a second glance, all his attention for her.

"Is this about what I do with Clint?" he asks, because he's expected this for awhile. There's nobody more protective of Hawkeye than the Widow, even though she can't give her friend the grounding constriction, purgative pain, or comforting domination for which he turns to Steve now that Agent Coulson is dead. Steve's been rather surprised that the shovel talk's been this long in coming. Only her eyes flicker strangely at his question, and she shifts as if uncomfortable, or possibly nervous.

"No," she says, but she's also nodding slowly. "It's about... I need you to know I could do it, Steve. I need you to understand that I am not safe, and I am not tame just because I..." She falters, blinking hard, her glare unfocusing, turning inward for just a second before it sours, her whole face twisting bitterly up. Then she swears in Russian, low and soft and vicious as she flicks the long knife back to the cutting board and hops off the counter without pausing to watch it stick point-deep in the wood. 

And suddenly Steve gets it. It's a hell of a shock, but he sees, suddenly and all at once, what this has all been about, from the pointed stares while he's buckling his shield into place before battle, to the increasing frequency and intensity of their sparring dates since Steve had become close with Clint. 

He's after her two seconds later, his longer legs an advantage he doesn't mind exploiting. She doesn't look back when he comes within reach, but she doesn't speed up either, nor does she evade when he walks close enough behind her that their fingers brush with every swinging stride. 

"Tell me one way," he orders as they come to the stairway door. 

"Headshot," she clips back, wrenching the door open and holding it for him. "Close range, so you couldn't dodge it. Hollow point ammunition would do too much damage for even you to regenerate."

Steve smiles in answer to the dare in her eyes, and precedes her through the door without a wary glance. "That's the easy answer," he says. "Now tell me how you'd do it if I'd tied your hands." He hears the catch of her breath, hears the faint hum of whine that anybody else would miss on her slow, measured exhale, and he knows he's guessed right.

"Tied how?" she asks, and starts down the stairs, pace slower than before.

"Palms facing behind your back, fingers pointed down" he muses, "Wrapped from knuckles to elbows. You're flexible enough for that to be comfortable."

"Thumbs?" she demands, and the pale skin of her throat has pinked just slightly.

Steve smiles, spotting the trap. "Loose," he says. "But anchoring a choke-loop around your throat, so you'll want to keep them still, overall."

He can see how a shiver slinks underneath the rolling, even gait of her descent. "I'd break your neck," she answers after taking several breaths. Steve doesn't need to ask how -- he's seen her do it before with her thighs and jump-velocity alone. "You don't regenerate nervous tissue as quickly as the rest, so a spinal injury would keep you down for long enough that I could get free, then strangle you with the ropes." 

"That's a risk," he says, surprised to find himself actually enjoying the debate. "You haven't got any hard data on how long I can go without breathing."

She flashes a glance back at him, and her cheeks are bright with something that isn't shame at all. "I'm flexible. I can adapt if strangling doesn't work. Find something sharp enough to cut your throat."

"Even if Jarvis is on my side?" Steve asks.

"My protocols do generally predispose me toward preventing assassination of designated Tower residents," the AI put in, not entirely unruffled as Natasha opens the door on Steve's floor and leads them out. "I would be forced to intervene in the event any serious injury seemed imminent."

She shrugs and strides for the gymnasium door, so casual and careless that Steve knows there is something frightened underneath it. "I'd just evade if Jarvis got involved," she says. "Get clear of the building and wait till I could snipe you from a distance. Clint's better than I am, but I'm very good at range, and I know where your cowl's-"

"All right. The new restraints Tony's working on for SHIELD then," Steve offers as he watches her take a set of hand wraps from the shelf and uncoil them. "Full suspension, fingers and thumbs immobilized in electromagnetic cuffs that transfer resistant force back into energy. How will you kill me then?"

She cuts him a glance and shifts her feet, but keeps wrapping. "That design has a flaw. It might short itself out if someone's flexible enough to bring the foot restraints around into range with the arm restraints."

"But supposing it didn't short out."

"Then I'd wait till you fucked me, and tear your throat out with my teeth while you were coming." There's something hard and heavy in those words, and Steve knows it for gruesome memory rather than lurid imagination. He knows he will never ask her how a life tasted on her tongue, or if the flavor haunts her even now, just in case she actually answers. He drifts nearer, watching awareness of his proximity tighten the elegant lines of her neck.

"What if I used the neutralizing collar as well?" He makes himself escalate.

Her head comes up, eyes wide for just a second. Then she narrows her glare. "You won't use the collar."

She's right, of course. The neutralizing collar is designed to contain supers and dangerous mutants. It translates their energy and power into its direct opposite, delivering a shock to the wearer whenever he or she attempts to use their powers. It's barbaric, torturous, far too easily abused, and Steve would sooner shoot a prisoner cleanly between the eyes than strap them into a trap that would explode and kill them if tampered with. He'd fought Fury to the ground on the topic when he first learned of the device's existence, even knowing it would get him nowhere, and the whole team had been party to his opinion on the subject. 

She smiles then, seeing the truth of her words in Steve's eyes, and goes back to wrapping her hands. "Besides, shorting out the restraints would set off the collar anyway, so it would just be a matter of waiting till you were in range of the-"

Steve takes two more silent steps and sets his hand on the back of her neck, not grasping, just letting weight of it rest against the subtle curve of her spine, his fingers curled gently around one side while his thumb perches over her charging pulse on the other. She freezes, loose and low in her skin rather than fighting-taut or trembling with the urge to run, but Steve isn't fooled. He steps close, curls his other hand loosely over the point of her elbow, and leans in to murmur in her ear. "And if there was no rope at all?"

She swallows, and is silent. Steve brushes his thumb in gentle circles under her jaw. "If there was no binding but your own will, and the desire to please me? If there was no pain, no punishment, and no shaming, but comfort, praise, and protection instead? If the only thing I took away from you was the need to be wary, to keep one eye open, and to watch your own back at all times? How would you kill me then?"

He feels the breath she takes then, swelling the back of her ribs against him until she's very nearly shaking. "That's not possible." She says, as if she's describing the tooth fairy, true love, or an honest politician -- something she'd convinced herself could not be true, so the heartbreak of missing it might one day fade.

Steve slides his hand up her neck then, just enough to cup the back of her skull, thumb behind one ear, fingers behind the other as he dips to press one kiss to her forehead. Then he takes his hands away and steps back. "Of course it isn't, Tasha," he agrees, and takes himself back to the kitchen to finish making his soup.

She doesn't follow him. 

He isn't surprised.


	2. Bouree

A few days later, a large, flatish, square pillow turns up in the common room, tucked into the shadow of Steve's favorite armchair. He only notices it because there are small, bright sequins worked into the patchwork of silk and embroidery, and they catch the early sunlight like diamonds as he comes in from his run. 

The underside of the cushion is plain canvas, sturdy, durable, grungy with long use, and the dense cotton stuffing inside it shows the grooves of someone's habit of sitting on their shins. Steve crouches near it, fingering one frayed corner where a bright rose patch of Indian sari silk binds into a scrap of velvet, and wonders if, should he put his nose down to it and breathe deep, the pillow would smell of harsh tobacco, of exotic spices, or of perfume.

One thing's sure though – it can't stay where it is. Tony's sure to trip over it here when he stumbles in for his breakfast of grass-juice and gritty protein powder, and then there'll be no end of bitching. Steve moves it to the other side, spanning the space between his favorite chair and the sofa. He pushes the side table back a bit to make room for it, and then after a moment, moves the novel Natasha had left on the dining table to where it can be reached from the cushion, and adds her favorite teacup to the arrangement.

It's a guess, he knows, but he's got a knack for those. 

By the time the smell of cooking bacon begins to draw the others in from their various rooms, Steve's all but forgotten the pillow is there. It's only when Clint comes in, cheerfully bickering with Thor only to stop mid-word, staring at the patchwork as if it's his mother's own ghost that Steve recalls it.

"My friend," Thor says, half-reaching for Clint, but drawing the gesture short. "Are you well?" When he gets no answer, Thor casts a perplexed glance toward Steve, who has to shrug, turning the pancakes briskly so he can set his spatula aside. 

Clint doesn't look up as Steve comes up behind him. "Cap," he murmurs, swaying backward as if Steve's gravity is pulling him off center. "Did you...?"

Steve shakes his head and eases forward so that one of his shoulders brushes gently against his man's rigid back. "It was here when I came in," he says, taking pride in the way Clint's muscles begin to loosen at his touch. "I only moved it. What's wrong?"

Clint shakes his head then, not a refusal, but as if he needs to clear it – draws in a breath, high and tight between his teeth as he scrapes both hands into his pillow-crazed hair. "First time I saw that pillow, it was in a safe house in Budapest," he says, and his grey eyes are haunted. "Last time I saw it was at Phil's apartment."

"Hey, who's burning the pancakes?" Bruce's grumble whips all three of them around, and with a curse, Steve bolts back to the griddle to see what he can salvage of breakfast.

By the time he's sorted things out, Clint's disappeared, and neither he nor Natasha appear that morning at all. When Steve returns to the Tower from his morning of interviews and his afternoon of volunteering, he notes that Natasha's book has been moved, its ribbon marker half an inch deeper into the pages now than before. The blue and white teacup has been washed and set to dry on a towel by the sink.

That night, he answers his door to find Clint, shirtless, fractious, and fidgeting a coil of rope in his hands. Steve is not surprised by this. 

He binds Clint into a standing spread at the foot of his bed, and uses a pair of heavy deerhide floggers to pick apart the frantic, jagged energy that's boiling under his skin. Blow by blow Steve wears it down until the tension spills from Clint in a pulsing groan and a grateful slump into the ropes, leaving him dreamy-eyed and boneless with release. 

Cleaned, salved, and curled under Steve's arm with a cup of cocoa afterward, Clint's breath is a soft, heated blaze against his shoulder, and the words are muzzy and half-thought. No confidence betrayed, so much as a worry at last squirming loose from the silence that had caged it. 

"She's gone," he murmurs, and Steve goes still. "Solo op. Left this evening." Steve runs his fingers through Clint's damp hair, rutching the strands up into short ridges before smoothing them back down again. He doesn't have to wait long before Clint tucks a little closer and sighs, "First solo since... Since Phil."

"I see," Steve says, holding Clint a little tighter. He thinks he understands the pillow a little better, in light of that information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit short, this one, my dear murderberries, but more will be coming very soon, I promise.


	3. Haye

Two weeks later, two thirty in the morning, Natasha's back, slinking her way wordlessly, seamlessly into Steve's late-night-can't-sleep workout routine. She stares at him, wrapping her hands with boxing tape, as if daring Steve to comment on the bruise that spreads purple-black and yellow across the left side of her jaw, but he's always known the difference between a challenge and a dare.

He heads for the ring, because it's obvious she hadn't come for the heavy bag or the treadmill, and he tells himself that she needs this – whatever it is she's come here to find, Natasha knows herself, and knows him by now, well enough to believe he can give it to her. His job is just to figure out what that might be. 

Nearly an hour later, she hasn't given him a clue. He hasn't been going easy, hasn't been giving hits away, or passing openings up, but he can tell she's getting angrier and angrier the longer they go. It shows in wider swings, harder kicks that leave her open for retaliation, hasty sets, hastier recoveries, and repostes that rely on momentum rather than balance – it shows in mistakes, and whether Steve capitalizes on them or not, those angry mistakes only make things worse. After the third time he only-just-barely dodges Natasha's honest attempt to break his neck, Steve decides that this is obviously getting them nowhere.

"Enough," he says, throwing her hard enough that he can step well out of range before dropping his guard. "That's-"

He doesn't have time for more. A silver glint brings his arm up swinging, but knocking the knife out of the air doesn't leave him time to twist away from the attack that follows. For a few breathless moments, it's all defense, until Steve gets hold of Natasha by one foot and slings her hard into the wall. "Stop it," he says as she shakes her head and gathers herself into a bitter, furious coil, "Natasha, I don't want to-"

She bounds up, off the wall for height, and in a wicked midair twist, evades Steve's grab for her. He feels her knee slide over his shoulder as the other thigh swings around for the velocity she'll need to shatter bone. He slings his weight along with it, twisting over and down, so that her head and shoulders take the piledriver of their combined mass. Her pelvis is as good as a fist to the throat when they hit, but he can feel the shudder that goes through her, and the feeble, shocked thud of her heels against his back. She took worse of it than he did. 

But when Steve rolls free to check she's okay, she's swinging for him again, her porcelain mask cracked to show something blazing hot through the cracks. If he lets her get out of reach again, Steve realizes, he's going to have to _really_ hurt her to make her stop. He takes two hits to the diaphragm, a bite to his forearm and a wild kick that was almost lucky enough to hit him in the crotch, but then he manages to grapple the furious woman to the mat and pin her.

"Natasha, stop it!" he says, voice pitched to cut through her wordless, frantic snarling. "Stand _down_ , Widow!" But her thrashing doesn't cease, doesn't even slow, and if Steve weren't wrapped all the way around her, half on top of her, with his knees pinning hers to the mat beneath them, he knows the Black Widow would be trying to kill him again even now.

He feels her shoulder tense under his as she drops her chin to try, once again, to get her teeth on him, but this time he follows her down before she can lash back up and try to bash his face with her skull. "I know you're hurting," he tells her, lips hard against the sweaty red tangle of her hair, "but this is getting dangerous. This is not sparring, this is brawling, and we need to stop it now." 

Her only answer is another savage wriggle. He can feel the bones of her wrist creaking in his grasp, and knows that another solid pull from her will either break them, or win her arm free. Either way, that is an escalation he is not willing to allow. There's an old proverb he remembers hearing, about riding a tiger, and how you can't ever dismount, but sometimes, when the tiger's given you only three choices, the one that doesn't involve either you or it dying is worth the effort. 

"If I let go of your right hand," he begins, easing his grip just the tiniest amount, but instead of taking his peace offering, she rips her arm free and claws him again, raking deep furrows across his scalp and temple before he can get her arm pinned once more. "Damn it, Tasha," Steve snarls, "What do you want?"

Her body flexes beneath him, breath quick and frantic, threaded with desperate, moist noises that might be curses, but wouldn't dare be sobs.

Steve really, really hopes they aren't sobs. 

"You know I don't want to hurt you," he tells her, and flinches as the low, harsh noises braid into words, thick and desperate and half-smothered in the wrestling mats. It takes him a second to realize she's not speaking English, and then a second more to dredge up what little Russian he remembers learning during the War.

" _No. Little Talya is not useless broken,_ " he tries, certain he's saying it all wrong. " _She is good. She is strong._ " And damn it all, that noise _is_ a sob, and the quivering he can feel through her body is her fighting off tears, and Steve's never been any damn good with women, has he? Then she goes limp so quickly, so completely that Steve nearly breaks her wrist in shock at the sudden lack of resistance.

He blinks, waits, counting breaths, then shifts his left knee out of the crook of hers, releasing the force that had pinned it safely down. " _Little Talya is safe,_ he says, " _You are safe, and I will not hurt you._ " 

The shaking gets worse, the sobbing gets louder, but she doesn't lash out. She also doesn't exploit the chance Steve offers her when he rolls them both over and tucks her across his lap, turning his restraining grapple into a sheltering hug. She just curls in tight and lets him hold her together, as if that was what she had wanted all along. One of his soldiers needing the stick, so she can accept the carrot after.

He hasn't got a clue what to say, and is almost relieved to realize that she probably wouldn't understand a word even if he could manage it. Instead, he just rocks her, rocks them both slowly back and forth, humming half-remembered lullabyes until her brief storm quiets, and she begins to match him, breath for breath against his chest.

"I'm all right," she says eventually. Each word is clear, unclogged, precise.

"I know," he says, stilling. For a long moment, neither of them moves.

"You can let me go now," she says, as though the cradle he's made of himself around her was anything like a challenge for her to escape if she meant to. But she doesn't move to try and get away, not even to shift her balance in the cradle of his lap. 

Steve smiles against her hair, cool relief uncoiling in his belly. "Is that what you want me to do?" he asks, and only then does the tension return to Natasha's slight form. Steve takes that for his answer and lifts his hands away. 

She's out of his lap and halfway across the gym in seconds, her pale skin flushed high across cheeks still streaked with the tears she hasn't rubbed away. He waits where he is, feeling the air chill against the wet patch of his shirt, and meeting her stare as levelly, as calmly as he can. Skittish doesn't begin to describe this, but there's something inside him that's beginning to understand it all. At least he thinks so, anyway, and as her lips part to let her tongue glide over them – the first nervous gesture he's ever seen Natasha show, -- he begins to hope she'll be able to tell him.

"I," her voice is low, at once more solid, and more tentative than he's ever heard it. "I didn't inten-"

And that moment, of course, is when Clint comes bounding into the gym. Steve gets just one glimpse of relieved/excited/glad/annoyed in the archer's grey eyes before Natasha whips around and he gets a look at her. Tears, bruises, a crust of blood riming one nostril. Color and cheer drain from Clint's face as he lurches a step forward.

"Nat?"

Steve looks away, not wanting to see what it'll do to Clint when she shoves past him and runs. He'd rather begin the slow, careful process of pulling himself back together, figuring out just what the hell-

"What the _fuck_ did you do to her?!"

The fury in Clint's voice shouldn't be surprising, Steve realizes that even as his eyes are flashing back upward, even as he's recognizing the fact that if Clint had a gun right now, it would be pointed unerringly at Steve's right eye. It's on the tip of his tongue to say 'nothing', but Steve can feel the faint sting of red furrows along his brow and cheek, the taut draw of a rising bruise beneath his jaw, the dull throb of his forearms, and thinks that if it was him standing where Clint is standing, seeing what Clint's too-sharp eyes are seeing, an evasion like that would probably get one or the other of them killed.

And he's had enough of fighting his own for one lifetime. 

Steve spreads his hands, a show of peace, and gets slowly to his feet. "We were sparring. It got out of-"

"She was _crying_!" Clint lurches another step, and it's clear he's only just barely holding back the urge to swing. "Natasha doesn't cry! The _Black Widow_ cries, but only when she's working. Never Natasha, she..." He flashes a look over his shoulder at the door, as if weighing his odds of finding her now, then he turns back to Steve. "Natasha doesn't cry."

And again, Steve can only show his hands, low and open, and offer the truth. "Talya does."

A flicker of confusion splits that sniper-glare; a blink, as good as pale lips shaping the name in silence, and then recognition. And then a quick pour of horror, heartbreak, and shame, with a dollop of resolve on top. "Yeah," Clint sighs at last, and the fight drains out of him, leaving him strangely small and weary-looking under the fluorescent lights. "Yeah, I guess she would." 

He scrubs his face then – Steve envies him the move, but doesn't want to aggravate the scratches any more than he has to – and heaves up a sour sort of half smile. "I want ice cream," he says. "You wanna go out and get some ice cream?"

There's ice cream in the freezer upstairs, but Steve doesn't mention that. "It's nearly four in the morning."

"We're in New York City," Clint counters, "You wanna go or not?"

"Let me grab a shower," Steve says, knowing that ice cream is not what's really on offer here, and refusing will let slip a chance that might not come again. "Meet you downstairs in fifteen."


	4. Demi Coupee

True to his word, Clint finds a diner that's not only open, but has a pretty fair selection of ice cream to offer for that hour of the morning. Clint gets a banana split, while Steve gets a chocolate malt roughly the size of his head, and they both get about halfway through before Clint is ready to broach the subject at all.

"She say what happened?" he asks with his mouth full.

Steve shakes his head. "Nope. Just taped up and headed for the ring without a word."

"And you _went_?" Clint's side-eye calls his sanity into serious question, and Steve has to smile at it.

"Actually not the stupidest or most reckless thing I've ever done, believe it or not," he says, and takes another drink. "I think she needed it," he adds after a silent moment of thought. "To fight her hardest like that, to give it her all, holding nothing back, and to lose. But not-"

"But not to _lose_ lose," Clint nods.

"Not to be punished for losing," Steve corrects, and realizes only as the words fall out of his mouth that he has the truth of it. "To fail, and be comforted instead of chastised, or..."

"Yeah," Clint sighes, shaking his head. "Or. Man, we're all just misfit toys, aren't we, Cap?"

Steve gives his man a look, then leans a little closer on his stool so their shoulders bump, then steady into a solid press of mass into mass – soldier's code for the hug it wasn't always safe to offer. "Seems like we fit with each other just fine," he says, returning his attention to his chocolate malt, "Just a matter of finding the right angles, is all."

Clint huffs a laugh, leans into the press, and stuffs a bite of ice cream and fruit into his mouth. Once he's chewed it down and swallows, he checks to see the counter girl was out of earshot, then cuts Steve a sideways glance. "This was her first solo run without Phil."

"You'd said," Steve nods. "Did Agent Coulson... Was he with her like he did for..."

Clint shakes his head. "Not like me, no. She does too much of that kind of shit for work. There's no way it could-" He takes a breath, then takes a bite, and Steve knows it was as much to cover his nerves as to buy time choosing the right words for talking about SHIELD's most beloved ghost. "There was something. The cushion. Talya. She used to debrief alone with him at his apartment after solo missions. I never asked. Wasn't my business, and since I didn't want him talking about me..."

Steve grunts, understanding the enormous effort of will it must have taken for Clint never to try and spy on them. He hates not knowing details as much as Tony does, but his love for Natasha and for Phil runs much deeper than his need to see all the angles and predict for ricochet. "I've got the idea," Steve says, then waits till Clint looks up to meet his stare. "You all right with this?"

"With what?" Clint barks a laugh more brittle than it should be. "With you being Nat's punching bag?"

"If that's what she needs," Steve replies, glad that the scratches are on the other side of his face. "And if I'm the one she wants it from."

To his credit, Clint resists the snappy comeback Steve can see in his eyes. Instead, he stirs his melting ice cream around a bit and actually thinks about it before he answers. "I don't think it is what she needs," he says. "Not really. It's just she doesn't trust easy, and with Phil gone, she wouldn't want anyone to see her that vulnerable." Then he's silent for a long, considering moment, his weight against Steve's shoulder increasing just a tiny bit as he offers, casual as can be, "Want me to hack SHIELD and find out what happened on this last op? Might help figure her out without getting your neck broken."

"No I don't," Steve says, just enough snap in his voice to shut that line of consideration down hard. "If she needs to give up control to me, then she needs to give it up," he goes on in a milder voice, not letting Clint flinch away from him. "Not to have it taken from her."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right." Clint sighs. Then, when Steve shifts away, he flashes a startled glance.

Steve catches and holds it with his own. "I am right," he says, and sets his glass aside. "But I'm also not going to let _you_ down, Clint. You came to me first, and it matters that you be all right with this thing that's happening with Natasha, wherever it might go from here."

Clint stares for a long moment, open and unshielded, and plainly worried, then he closes his eyes and nods. "Yeah. We're good Sir. I'm not the jealous type." Which is as close as Steve figures he'll ever get to ' _I trusted Phil with the both of us, and I choose to trust you too_ ' from his man. The smile he gets along with the shrug warms the last doubt from his belly.

"So it's not quite six yet. I got a scoop, a tube of tennis balls, and a thirty foot bullwhip in my bag," Clint chirps a moment later, the imp rising once more with a sparkle to his eyes. "Wanna go find a park and break some noise ordinances?"

Steve chuckles and gives his right shoulder an experimental roll. It cracks alarmingly, but doesn't particularly hurt, even when he shrugs it up high. "Sure," he says then with a laugh, "I haven't been arrested yet this week."


	5. Pas Balance

"Hey, Cap! Where you been all day?" Tony calls from the nest he's made of his corner of the sofa. "We were beginning to wonder whether we should send in the extraction team in case you and birdbrain there got stuck toge– hey!" he grunts as Bruce bops him on the head with a pillow.

"There's dinner if you're hungry, Steve," Bruce says, a glint of apology in his eye. "Is Clint coming down too?"

Steve stretches a bit, grins at the doctor, and rewards his not-so-subtle dig for information (as opposed to Tony's blatant one,) with a shake of his head. "Pretty sure he had a training session scheduled over at SHIELD this afternoon," he says, heading over toward the sofa to stare at the TV. "Last I saw of him was something around lunchtime. What the heck is on that fella's head?"

"The Eighties," Tony answers and shifts his feet out of the way. "Have a seat. The apocalypse gets a lot better once Tina Turner shows up in a chainmail dress."

"Don't you get enough of apocalypses in your day job?" Steve asks, glancing around the room. Thor is watching the screen with the single-minded focus he always gives it on movie nights, as if the actors might notice his inattention and be offended by his distraction. 

Natasha, though in the room, is wedged into a corner, ignoring the world from the shelter of a thick paperback. He knows better than to think she's at all inattentive though, and the flicker of a glance he gets as she turns a page is knowing, wary proof of that.

"End of the world's not so bad when it's not us who have to prevent it," Bruce offers. "Downright relaxing, by comparison." Like Tony, he edges a bit of his stuff out of the way and cuts a meaning glance toward the seat, but Steve shakes his head.

"Nah. I've got plans for the evening," he says, picking up the patchwork pillow from beside the sofa and tucking it under his arm.

"Plans? What plans?" Tony pouts as Steve headed for the kitchen.

"Personal plans," he calls back, getting down the blue and white teacup and saucer from the cupboard.

"How do you even _have_ plans when you've been in bed all day?" 

Steve ignores Tony's grumbling and heads back to the elevator. He doesn't need to look back to know that Natasha is watching him go – he can feel her eyes on his neck like a laser sight all the way.


	6. Pas Scissone

It only takes Steve about half an hour to get his place ready, but he's not really surprised when it's another two before Natasha turns up, silent and ominous as her namesake in his entry hall. 

He's in the kitchen, cutting fruit when he notices her; between one glance and the next, she's there, the brilliant sweep of her hair the loudest thing about her as she crouches to unlace her boots on the tile. Steve never heard the door open, and knows absolutely that she intended it that way. The dance they've been doing this past month has been all about testing Steve; his strength, his respect, his understanding of the clues she'll never be able to give him out loud. The thread of this soundless invasion is one more just alike -- a final ' _You'd never hear me coming_ ', in case he'd forgotten that she is not, as she'd warned him at first, at all tame.

As if he could imagine Natasha tame to begin with.

Still, Steve acknowledges the message with a nod when she stands upright, boots in hand and one eyebrow arched in query. "The shield is beside the door in the bedroom," he tells her, tipping a nod toward the door. "You can put your things on it for safekeeping. I'll be waiting in the living room when you're done changing."

Her eyebrow hikes just a little higher, but Steve ignores the challenge and goes back to rendering the pear on his cutting board into thin, white slices. She scans the apartment, and Steve watches her take note of the normalcy; he hasn't set out any of the tools Clint prefers, hasn't rearranged the furniture to allow room to swing a lash, or to scrap for dominance as she'd done with him in the gym. The only piece of furniture that's not in its accustomed place is the coffee table, which Steve has shifted to make room on the floor by the sofa for the oversized patchwork pillow.

"When you're ready," he reminds her, and watches her fingers bunch up tight at her sides, then uncoil into determined defiance. She marches into the bedroom without a second glance, and somehow Steve manages to keep his smile to himself until the door closes between them. There's something in him that enjoys this perilous guessing game, like playing mumblety peg in a minefield. He likes better with every sign she lets slip that he's winning despite the odds her past and his have stacked against him.

"Privacy mode please, Jarvis," he says as the teapot whistles on the stove.

"Engaged, Captain," the AI replies. "All messages for yourself and Agent Romanov will be queued, and access codes for your quarters disabled for the duration, barring Avengers emergency. Would you like security monitoring disabled as well?"

Steve thinks about that, considers Tony's spying habits against the worry Clint never quite let go of last night, and the immensity of the trust Natasha is laying in his hands now. Then he shakes his head. Not without a safety net. 

"Next time, Jarvis," he says, picking up the tray and heading to the sofa. "For tonight, I'd like you to monitor for safewords please."

"Of course, Captain. And the safewords are?"

"Valkyrie is mine," Steve says, setting the tray onto the sofa beside him, and pretending not to hear the quiet snikt of his bedroom door unlatching. "She'll tell you hers before we begin."

"Very good, Captain," Jarvis answers, and goes silent. 

Steve cues the movie, he's chosen, then pours a cup of tea and floats a slice of lemon in it. "Come around please," he says once his neck begins to prickle. "I'd like to see which you chose." 

She lets her feet scuff lightly on the carpet this time, and Steve waits until she stops beside the cushion to look up and appreciate the sight of her in blue flannel pajamas, scrubbed clean of makeup, with her hair bunched back behind her head. There's a part of him that's just a little disappointed she didn't choose the white linen night dress he'd found for her. He'd have liked to see her in such an elegant concealment, the lace delicate and spare, the embroidery subtle and lovely, the fabric so softly worn as to be a whisper against the skin. He forgives himself that regret even as he sets it aside -- he's still learning her, after all, and can wait awhile to put his own preferences forward.

Her face is still, but somehow tentative, as if she hadn't been sure of her choice, so Steve offers her an approving nod, and asks, "Comfortable?"

Her eyes flick toward the tray, the single cup of tea, the small, tidy meal already cut into bite sizes. Then she shrugs, one hand toying with the bottom button of her top, and lets her gaze fall to the cushion at her bare feet.

"Something you need to say?" Steve asks her after a long, silent moment."

"I don't want you to fuck me." Her voice is blunt, harsh, nothing like the smoothly cultured tones Steve's heard her use for interrogations.

"Then I won't," he answers, and is pleased to win a flickering, startled glance for it.

"I don't want you to hit me either," she adds, not quite looking at his face, not yet ready to let herself settle into his offer. "I'm not like Clint."

"I know that," Steve says. "And I won't – not when we're like this."

"Then..." Natasha waves a hand at him, the sofa, the tray, the cushion, her brows knit with confusion. "Then what do you want me here for?"

Steve considers the question, both the one she's asked, and the dozen or so she's hidden unasked beneath it. Then he waits, makes her seek his eyes with hers before he asks in return, "Do you _want_ to know that Talya, or do you _need_ to know?"

The Black Widow is an open book of deceptive truths and irrefutable lies; Natasha is an inscrutable baffle of sarcasm and sidelong inference; this woman standing before him answers to her name with a tiny, honest flinch of her eyes, and an almost imperceptible unwinding of the steel beneath her skin. Her shrug, when it comes, is fluid and elegant, and just colored with an endearing bashfulness. That's going to be dangerous, Steve realizes with a smile as his heart warms a bit at the sight, he'll have to watch himself on that one.

"Then we'll start working on trust there," he tells her, and points to the cushion. 

She sinks down obligingly enough, but turns on her knees to face him, her eyes now fixed on his face in open challenge and deliberate misinterpretation. Steve decides to let the challenge slide, correcting her only with a frown, and a single finger stirring the air between them. She pushes it just a moment longer, but seems to decide that she'd rather see the carrot before pushing for the stick again. She turns her back to the sofa, and lets herself settle, warm and sleek against his knees. Waiting.

Steve rewards her with the cup of tea, and a gentle stroke to her hair as she tips her head to drink. "I do want you," he says after a few moments, when the cords of her neck are easy, and her weight rests heavy and loose against the bulwark of his legs. "I want you; not to screw, and not to hit, but to care for." She turns toward his hand between one stroke and the next, meets his palm with an almost feline butting of her forehead, and Steve has to smile. "I want to protect you for as long as you want my care and protection."

She tenses at that, but Steve digs his fingers into the bundled hair and stills her head before she turns. " _Want it_ , Talya," he reminds her, turning his brief grip into a scratching sort of massage against her scalp. "We both know you don't at all need my protection, but you _are_ here because you want to be here."

She accepts the reward with a sigh, and drops her head into the span of his spread fingers, but she's not quite ready yet, it seems. "And if I don't?" she murmurs, her eyes closed now.

"Then you get dressed, and you leave," he says, fingers scrubbing at her scalp, loosening the band's grip on her hair, softening the strands about her face.

She opens her eyes at this, and Steve can see her sinking into it; wanting to drift down, still not wholly convinced, but hopeful, so hopeful. "And if I don't want to leave?"

"You mean, if you want something different than I'm giving you?" She nods; a tiny, restless flick against his hand, and he smiles. "Then you put your clothes on, we go into the kitchen, we drink some tea, and we talk about it. Agreed?"

Her eyes drift closed, and there's a shiver beneath her skin, so fine and slight he might have taken it for a hum. Or a purr. Then she pulls away, her bound hair combing through his open fingers to leave the band behind. It tumbles in a riot of red curls around her face as smoothly, all balance and poise, she sets the empty teacup aside and gets up. Without once looking Steve's way, walks back into his bedroom and shuts the door. There is only one thing that stops Steve from being sure he's offended her, failed her in some subtle, painful way -- a slight curve dimpling her cheek, just by the curl of her red hair. Not a smile, nor a smirk, nor a sneer, but Steve's gut tells him it matters.

So he waits. Pours himself a cup of tea, adds milk and the barest touch of sugar -- just the way he drank it with Peggy once upon a time. He takes it to the table, along with Natasha's half-finished cup, and sips it while he waits, wondering how he'd thought the drink was bitter then. This time when Natasha opens the door, he turns, his face set in a smile of easy welcome until he sees her in the doorway, elegant, beautiful, and but for a single, scarlet band of leather draped across her hands, naked.

Steve swallows, shutting his mouth with a click of teeth. There's a flicker of light at her wrist -- a small golden tag attached to the collar, catching the light and betraying the taut, fine tremble that she's managing otherwise to hide. Her eyes are on him -- intent, but not arresting, not forbidding. Steve's meant to look his fill, and so he does, and lets his appreciation of what he sees show plainly on his face. 

She's eerie in her perfect, fearful symmetry, all alabaster and rose, flame and snow -- the only blemishes to be seen on her are the shadowy signs of the fight they had yesterday, and even those have faded to smudges. As much a telling sign of the serum in her veins as the soft swells of breasts, hips, and thighs in a woman whose brutal workouts should have long since worn her to gristle and bone. Like him, she is not the architect of her perfection, and like him she tries her best to maintain it, to maximize it, to be constantly worthy of it, and he can see now in the unmasked hesitance of her watching green eyes, like him she must sometimes resent it, and wonder if she would not have been happier flawed.

He watches those eyes as he rewards her vulnerability with a smile and a nod, and is pleased to see the wariness ease when he tells her, "Well done."

She lifts the collar then, sets it to her throat and buckles it snug with quick, knowing fingers, her eyes watching his for any sign of disappointment that she's not asked him to do it. He doesn't give her one -- just waits until she's settled the gleaming tag at the notch of her throat, and then gets to his feet, one outstretched hand beckoning her close. He lifts the little tag to the light when she comes to him, feels the warm weight of real gold as he picks his way through unfamiliar letters and finally makes the word out.

"Tlaechka," he says, and her eyes slide closed on a shiver that can only be relief. Steve lets his hand slide around the long column of her throat to cup the back of her skull, tip her face upward so he can plant a lingering, reverent kiss on the smooth span of her brow. 

"I am sorry to intrude, Captain," says Jarvis, and he really does sound it. "But the lady has not yet given me a safeword."

Steve steps back, gives her a nod, and turns to get the teacups from the table. She slips quickly around him though, snatching both up and turning, poised and elegant on her toes to take them back to the sofa. "My word is _hvatit_ , Jarvis," she says, settling back into her cushion, and balancing both cups, not a drop sloshed free, on her creamy thighs.

Steve smiles, weirdly proud of her for the choice. No games, no illusions, no doubletalk -- if Talechka says to stop, she trusts that he will, no matter what. He returns to the sofa, helpless beneath the weight of his grin, and settles into his place, accepting the milky tea from her and stroking her tumbled curls with the other. She butts into his hand with unveiled pleasure, snuggles her back up tight against Steve's shins, and sips her own tea.

"Begin the movie please, Jarvis," Steve says, and the opening credits of _Sleeping Beauty_ begin to roll. He reads curiousity in the tilt of her head as she turns to watch the screen, and Steve finishes his tea before volunteering the answer. "I've been catching up on these -- Disney's cartoons were a big reason why I wanted to go to art school. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was something pretty special when I saw it as a kid. Fantasia too." 

Steve brings her face around with the gentle stroke of a finger to her cheek, and offers a slice of pear. She takes it from his fingers without hesitation, her lips quirking happily even as she chews. "That was the last one I saw back then," he adds as she resettles herself, alongside his legs now, so he can feed her without leaning forward, and she can eat without turning from the movie. "And there are so many others now, what with the computer stuff and all, but I keep coming back to this one."

"Happily ever after, once the sleeping spell is broken," Talya says, as if she's certain of her understanding.

Steve laughs, and feeds her a bite of cheese. "Nah. I like the Prince." Again, that curious head-tilt, and Steve shrugs. "He's not like the one in the story -- that prince was just some wandering treasure hunter who decided it was fine to go kissing a sleeping girl who didn't know him from Adam, and couldn't have said yes or no to it."

"That's the polite version of the story," she notes, glancing at the pile of almonds.

Steve offers one, and her lips are soft and moist on his fingers when she takes it. "I can live without knowing the other one," he grimaces, already imagining how much ruder it could be. "But in this one, they meet first, before she falls asleep. He meets her, he's charmed by her, he knows she wants to see him again, even though neither one of them can say who they really are just yet. He has a _reason_ to fight the thorns and the witch and the dragon to save her."

"Well, she _is_ pretty, in every version of the story," she says, eyes carefully on the screen. She accepts another slice of pear without looking away, and Steve smiles, letting his knuckles trail along her cheek again.

"Very pretty," he agrees when she obediently turns. "And that's reason enough to want her, sure. But I like it better when he does it all because he loves her."

"Love is for children." There's a quaver in that, and a flicker of pain that lifts drives her up from the comfortable, open ease she'd had just a moment ago.

Steve smooths her elegant brow under his thumb, and gives her back a shrug. "This movie's for children too," he agrees. "But I like it anyway."

She stares at him, eyes flicking back and forth between his, as if worried she might see something different in the right than the left, as if she fears reading everything wrong. He lets her look her fill, and when her gaze slides aside to land on the small pyramid of grapes, she follows it with a tiny, querying jut of her chin. He chuckles, and picks a stem from the bunch, making her crane her neck up, swanlike and beautiful before he lets her catch the fruit in her teeth and pull one loose.

"I like Maleficent," she says once she's chewed and swallowed it. 

"Yeah," Steve says, and feeds her another. "She's pretty great too."

They settle into silence for awhile, Talya taking longer with each bite she accepts from him, sometimes catching his fingers with her teeth so she can lick delicately at the juice or salt that clings to him. Steve's cock twitches with interest every time she does it, but he ignores it -- his prick's never ruled his decisions before, and he's not about to let it start now. When at last she settles her arm across his knees, and tilts her head to let it rest in the crook of her elbow, Steve figures the meal is done. As the movie's ending credits roll, he indulges himself in stroking Talya's tumbling hair, exploring the elegant sweep of her neck arching winglike into her shoulders, enjoying how the delicate hairs rise to his touch when he skates it, light as a breath, across her velvety skin.

She concedes a shudder, and hums, suggling harder, higher across his knees, and Steve blinks, surprised for a moment. But then she does it again, and so he leans to push the tray aside, and pats the sofa beside him. "Do you want to come up, Talechka?"

And she's in his lap not a second later, tucked up neat and snug against his chest, the crown of her head butting up his chin as she settles into him with a sigh. Steve wraps his arms around her more out of reflex than intention, as startled as he is awed by the sudden affection. She doesn't seem to mind that Steve's cock is half erect, though pressed as it is, between the curve of her hip and Steve's belly, there's no way she could miss it, or the eager lurch of interest it gives at the warmth and friction.

There's a shudder in Steve's breath once he manages to catch it. She hums again, a query in the tone of it this time, and Steve can feel a tickle of eyelashes against his collarbone. "Good girl," he says, and buries his fingers in her hair so that the sleek, bright strands pour through like warm silk. "Very, very good." The lashes sweep down again, perhaps just a little wet, and he chooses to take the noise she makes then for gratitude rather than grief.

"Do you need to tell me about it?" he asks presently, once the smoothing rhythm of his hands have softened her weight against him, eased the sense of clinging into an easy, trusting cuddle, timed her heartbeat and breaths to match his own. He realizes there's a good chance he doesn't have the clearance to hear what she had to get up to while she was away, but he'll happily ignore that rule if there's things she needs to say.

She shakes her head at the question though, just a rustling little fret of motion against his throat, but Steve's proud to note that she doesn't tense up at it. "No please," she murmurs. "Debriefed once already. Do..." He feels her glance upward again, but she doesn't untuck from beneath his chin to ask, "Do you sing?"

The question startles a laugh from him. "Oh Lord, not in years," he replies, stroking down the muscled length of her arm and back up again. Bucky had always been the skylark between them, filling up the air of whatever rooms they shared with his artless Irish tenor. Steve hadn't had the breath to join in without coughing most of the time, and when he did, he never felt equal to Bucky's skill. But here and now, warm and close, nestled into the hush of their pacing heartbeats, Steve finds himself charmed enough by the notion to try.

" _Goodnight my love, the tired old moon is descending._  
 _Goodnight, my love, my moment with you now is ending._ " 

He's tentative at first, then sings with growing pleasure as his voice answers readily, as well-tuned by the serum as his body. He'd had an ear for it before, but not the breath. Now the tones are pure and clear, and Steve got breath enough to sing forever.

" _It has been heavenly holding you close to me;_  
 _It will be heavenly to hold you again in a dream._  
 _The stars above have promised to meet us tomorrow._  
 _Till then, my love, how dreary the new day will seem._ "

Steve can feel her smile tugging at the skin of his neck, can hear, just barely, the hum of her voice under his, wordlessly following the tune as if she's known it for years. Remembering Phil's taste for things from Steve's own era, he supposes it's possible she has.

" _Though for the present dear, we'll have to part,_  
 _Goodnight, my love. Sleep tight, my love,_  
 _Remember that you're my sweetheart._ "

Her smile remains once he's finished, the tune's final flourish spooling easily away into silence. He's already thinking of the next, drawing back to mind every sweet, low lullaby he's ever heard, and prepared to sing each and every one to her if that's what his good girl needs.

But Talya is drowsing in his arms not five songs later, so deeply relaxed, so perfectly trusting that she barely murmurs when Steve works his arm under her knees and stands to carry her to bed. She wakes a little when he tugs back the covers and sets her in it, turning with knotted brow and a reaching hand as he steps back. "Shh, Talechka," he tells her, "I'll be there in a minute. Just let me change."

She's asleep when he returns from the bathroom, and curls sweetly, softly into the cup of his body when he settles beside her, intending only to yield to an hour or two of 'next-watch-doze'. But Steve falls asleep with a smile on his face, and the old Benny Goodman tune rolling through his mind, and it's dawn before either of them stirs again.


	7. Bow and Courtesy

The dream is a deep rose one -- all flushed skin, heated slick noises, and the hungry slide of flesh against flesh. It's not unusual, and even in his sleep, Steve's come to expect it; his body demands this sort of release from him just about every day, and if he doesn't see to it himself, his subconscious is more than willing to take the reins. He settles into the roll and surge of it, prepared to ride the dream through the finish, only it rolls back well shy, ebbing like a tide from underneath him until all of a sudden he realizes that only the damp lips against his throat, and the strong, small hand he's rutting into is real.

"It's all right," she murmurs, squeezing as he shocks still, breath frozen on a groan in his throat. "Go on, Stiva, it's fine." It feels so good, so damned perfect that he actually does roll back up into her grip a bit before he can stop himself.

"Ta- Talya?" he gulps, reaching for her wrist. "You said you didn't want-"

She slithers across his chest, silences him with a kiss that's more than half plunder, and only a little plea. "No," she says once she's decided they both need to breathe. "Natasha. Feel." And she draws his free hand up to her throat, where there's no strap of leather, no heavy golden tag. "Natasha. Just Natasha. And I want you -- I want _this_..." she squeezes his cock again, gives it a twisting stroke that wrings a spurt of precome from the root. "Will you let me have it, Stiva?"

"How -ah!" he looses his hold on her in favor of the sheets -- afraid for her bones if she drives him too much closer to the edge. This is probably another test. There's every reason in the world why Natasha Romanov keeps the codename of Black Widow, and she must be at her most dangerous at times like this, but... he blinks his eyes open, makes out her face above him in the silvering light of not-quite-dawn. Her eyes are vast and dark, her hair sweeping down to curtain them both from the world, her lips kissed full and soft, and good God, but he wants her too. 

"How do you want it?" he manages. It was always about trust, wasn't it? And that has to go both ways, he decides as her leg swings across, and she sits up to press her slick, heated core to his belly.

"Just like this," she says, and reaches back for his cock again. He flings an arm out, reaching for the night table drawer, and hoping the stash of rubbers there are still good, but she catches his chin and turns him back to see her wry little headshake. " _Just_ like this," she says. "We're both clean, and I can't get...I need to feel you, all right?"

"Yes," he says, because good man or not, Steven Grant Rogers is _not_ made of stone. Only part of him is at all confused about that, and that part is easily distracted when she spreads herself out around him and sinks down, surrounds him in gliding, rhythmic heat. All the rest? That's just like falling off a bike -- thrilling, terrifying, athletic, and given the physics involved, inevitable.

~*~

She's gone from the apartment when Steve finishes in the shower, along with her pillow, her teacup, and the nightgown and pajamas he'd bought for her. Steve scrubs at his hair with the towel, and tells himself he'd expected no less. When has Natasha been anything other than private, and secretive as a sphinx? The last thing she'd enjoy would be running into Thor or Tony on her way back from a night in someone else's room. Not that he thinks she'd be shamed, but he can't help thinking how easily last night's deep, heady intimacy could be cheapened if rubbed the wrong way.

Natasha cleaned up the leavings of last night's meal, he notices. The teapot and dishes are dry and stacked on the counter, and his nose tells him as he draws close that she's made coffee as well. There's a mug missing from his cupboard, he notices when he reaches down his own, a portion of the brew absent from the carafe, a fresh slice carved off the lemon he'd cut up for last night's tea. 

Trust, of course.

He returns to his room to dress for his habitual early morning run. The bed's been neatly made, the corners as precise and tight as any military cot or hospital bed. Only when he sits to put on his socks does Steve notice that the perfect symmetry of blue coverlet and white sheets is offset by a single bright slash of red leather and gleaming gold, left draping over the lesser used of Steve's two pillows like nothing short of a promise.

Steve takes up supple strip of leather, lets the golden tag dangle against his palm as he coils the red length around his knuckles with a smile. Then he tucks the collar into a corner of his night table drawer, and goes to finish his coffee. 

Perhaps this morning, running can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Allo, lovies. I've finally made my way back to this series. The story is about 2/3rds done, and outlined all the way through -- so it's not gonna turn into a novel on us. (Unlike the next Steve/Clint story, which is just _sprawling_ right now.) I have no posting schedule in mind, but I'll try not to keep you hanging too long.


End file.
